Higher education hopes dwindle for rural poor

Access to top universities is becoming increasingly off-limits to high school students living in China's impoverished rural areas, despite the country's profound transformation – and increased wealth.

(Ecns.cn) –The head of his class at a top University in Beijing, Lu Ming (alias) is astonished when he checks the roster and finds that only 5 out of 60 students come from rural areas, like himself.

Most of them, including the 22-year-old Lu, have been taught by their parents and teachers that "knowledge can change your destiny" or "heroes are only born out of adversity." Getting admitted to a good university in a first-tier city represents not only a personal achievement for these students, but also a major change for their families.

For Lu, the roster seems to laugh at such dreams, yet it is nevertheless a cold hard reflection of the status quo in the country's tertiary education system.

For a time, students from the countryside were the primary source for prestigious universities, as they tend to study harder compared to their urban counterparts. According to a study by Liu Yunshan, vice president of the Graduate School of Education at Peking University, rural students comprised more than 30 percent of the newly enrolled at first-class universities between 1978 and 1998 – but that percentage started to drop in the mid 1990s.

According to The Study on National Tertiary Education Fairness led by Professor Yang Dongping, only 17 percent of freshmen at Tsinghua University in 2010 came from rural areas, even though they comprised 62 percent of those registered to take the gaokao (national college entrance examination) that year.

The phenomenon has not only caught the attention of students and experts.

"When I was a university student, more than 80 percent of my classmates were from the countryside. The economy has been growing fast, but less of them are getting admitted by colleges and universities now," said Premier Wen Jiabao at an education conference held in 2008.

Gap in knowledge

The main cause for the drop has been a controversial issue for years: the reform of the gaokao system.

Despite criticism of its "scores for school" system, which leads to tough competition among students, the gaokao has widely been considered the fairest way to determine a student's fate. Regardless of wealth and social status, every student must take the same gaokao, a fact that in the past led to a high percentage of rural students getting admitted to high-quality universities.

However, one of the side effects of recent reforms, like evaluating students on their "overall quality" – as opposed to a simple consideration of test scores – is that the exam has become more easily exploited by those with strong social connections.

Jin Jun, a lecturer at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences of Tsinghua University, spent the last two years conducting a survey with the help of his students. The results show that the majority of the students at Tsinghua were born in cities, with parents who work as public servants or teachers, and who also travel a lot (some of them even studied abroad for a short period of time during high school).

It is certainly unfair to say that these students, who have had access to a much wider range of knowledge and better study conditions, are less qualified than students from rural areas, but they do have better chances of getting into top-notch schools.

The questions on the gaokao have also undergone dramatic reform. The exam now tends to be more concerned with knowledge found outside textbooks, an advantage for teenagers who live in cities, the Southern Weekend commented in a report.

Chen Meishi, a sophomore at Tsinghua University, said she was asked in an exam about the university that Fei Xiaotong (1910-2005, a renowned Chinese sociologist and anthropologist) attended.

"I didn't even know who Fei Xiaotong was, but they (high school students in Beijing) did," recalled Chen, who was born in a small village.

In light of China's economic success, the widening gap between urban and rural areas is not only about wealth, but also the knowledge base available to youngsters. Chances for young people from small villages have become slimmer than 20 years ago as large cities have attracted more resources, according to experts.

It will only become harder for students from rural areas to move up the social ladder, said Yang Dongping.